littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
It's not either/or, is it? It is possible to challenge gender roles and support transgender people. You dismiss an awful lot with your phrase 'some alleged inner drive'.
Transgender is it just me that is totally perplexed?
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littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
As for this, if you're referring to the thread I think you are referring to, that poster was pulled up on these ideas. There was no embarrassed silence.
I'm not sure it's really empathy that's required, more a pragmatic experience of how the anti-trans narrative, a ot of which looks fine on paper, actually would play out in the world.
One reason I suspect the women's refuge movement has not fallen in line behind trans-exclusion is that they have direct experience of working with transwomen and knowledge of how women's supprt services actually run. They know that the idea of a man both pretending to be a woman and pretending to be a victim of domestic violence and making it through all their safe guarding and risk assessment procedures is highly implausible. They probably don't want to be in a position when they have to send a transwoman, who appears and presents as a woman, and who they believe presents no risk, back to a violent partner simply because they are trans, especially when they know they have housed far more dangerous cis women.
One thing that seems to come up a lot is that non trans people seems to be more supportive of trans-inclusion if they have family or close friends who are trans. Again I'd suggest this is because they experience what it is like - they don't necessarily want their friend or family member to be forced to use the men's toilet, particularly in an environment where they may face problems, such a a particularly conservative venue or blokey pub because they don't want someone they care about to be at risk. If they are women they might want to be able to go to female only events, or go swimming, or shopping, or to the gym with their sister or friends without it being a risk for them, or them potentially being refused entry, or having big arguments about changing rooms. They see the abuse that transpeople get on an every day basis and want to protect them from that. I doubt there are many people on this thread who would genuinely force a trans-feminine young person to use a men's toilet if they were confronted with the choice about putting that person at severe risk of abuse, or worse, when they can just use the correct toilet for their gender presentation.
I don't really think any of this is empathy, just a practical understanding of what life is like for trans people and a bit of common sense based on that.
Quite, I was almost with it until the transpeople are probably liars bit at the end.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Yeah. I would be interested to know which bits are worthy of further discussion and hope we get that discussion. I was quite confident during 'simpler' stages of discussion, and with the most obvious trans v bigot stuff. I suppose we should be glad we've made it to a stage where nuanced details can pop up at every turn and complicate things, but somewhere along the way I have become confused in some areas and am therefore in more of a listening & learning mode than confident opinion declaring right now.
I can say that I really doubt Iran gets a free pass on this from liberals at all. Being pushed towards gender reassignment surgery as an alternative to the more deadly aspects of their justice systems treatment of sexuality has not gone unnoticed, without comment or liberal hand-wringing.
nyxx
*
You're right, vaginiphobia .. or whatever it might be called .. should be said. A gay friend also happens to be fairly misogynistic and on the odd occasion when the vagina has come up (so to speak) in conversation, expresses what I wouldn't hesitate to call some fairly strong vaginiphobia. If he encountered a trans man I have no doubt he for one would be grossed out by the presence of a vagina.
Anyway, yes - it's pretty clear that there exists disgust / ''phobia'' around all kinds of genital configurations.
I think it's also worth reiterating what's already been stated, which is that a person cannot be reduced to their genitalia (though a completely different, cis-het female friend who is a massive (no pun intended) size queen and seems to bounce from one terrible relationship to another in her search for the biggest and best, may have another perspective on that...)
This is a really difficult point, and I'd like to address it anecdotally .. in part because I have no actual data to share anyway, but also to put what I'll go on to say about transphobia in some perspective.
My first sexual encounter with a trans woman was with someone called Jamie (not her real name even at the time as it turned out, but how she first introduced herself to me) who I met at Heaven in 1995 and who I spent a rather torrid couple of weeks with before losing touch completely, in the way of things back then. She did have a penis, and that didn't bother me at all (quite the opposite actually). Anyway, I never saw and have never seen Jamie as anything other than a woman - despite the penis she was every bit as feminine as any woman I've met, as contradictory as that may sound - and she exists in a nice part of my mind where good, positive, even vaguely loving sex-memories reside. But I feel most of the straight-cis men I know would not even consider a dalliance like that, and I'm certain most lesbians wouldn't consider it. Would this be transphobic as such, or would the phobia / distaste centre more specifically on the presence of a penis? I can't answer for other people, but I suspect the penis itself would be an issue over and above Jamie's dirty laugh and beautiful eyes and cute breasts and other alluring aspects.
On the other hand (and still anecdotally), I should mention someone I met more recently than that, though still quite a few years ago now. Her name was P* and she was a fully-transitioned trans woman. We met in a pub in Bristol (long before I actually moved to Bristol though) and things began with her drunkenly ranting at me about all the abuse she'd suffered and was still suffering. I listened, we talked and ended up laughing, and went to a couple of different pubs where we did certainly attract some weird and unwelcome attention. It was scary.
During the course of all this she mentioned her expensive new vagina (her exact words) and the thing is, at that point any fancying I felt for her just evaporated. It was really awkward, and to cut a long story short the night ended with me being yelled at and slapped for being transphobic. Essentially, the idea of a surgically-created vagina really freaked me out. I mean, I was drunk by that point, OK, but the idea of (to me) missing bits and a cosmetic job in their place just .. well I can't put it better, it freaked me out. I think it still does and I have to be honest, if I ever got into something with an attractive trans woman again I'd still rather she had the intact (male) bits if I were to get into a sex situation.
Maybe it has something to do with orgasms, wetness, clitoris, G-spot, I don't know. The person is a whole person - I get that. But for me, something is wrong. So, I believe this is a kind of transphobia, probably .. and though I am vaguely uncomfortable at having to admit that, I have to. It doesn't change how I ally myself with my trans- brothers / etc / sisters in their struggle for social acceptance. And it doesn't have anything to do with their image of themselves as being physically right, which is more important than what anyone else thinks anyway.
I would add that I've never had sex (or even a snog tbf) with a trans man, though over the years I have met a few guys who are trans. Again though, I instinctively feel that if sex happened with a trans man, I'd end up more interested in the vagina (that was natural) more than the penis (which wasn't) and I'm aware of how hurtful that would be. Hence it's not something I've ever sought out.
Again though, this has little to do with a whole person who needs love and acceptance, and I apologise if anything I've written here is hurtful or upsetting to any trans person who reads. It's an honest perspective, is all I can say, and I don't consider myself a transphobe.
I have to add a last point though, about this being all about sex. I think trying to take sex out of it completely is misguided, after all, we are talking about sex, gender, sexuality, genital preferences (on self and others) and sex behaviour. But something I remember P* talking about at some length is how men were happy to fuck her, but finding anyone to hold hands and snog openly with during a night on the town was way more difficult. I think this is the phobia in action too (she certainly did) and I also think it's a far more subtle and (dare I say) harmful expression of it.
So yeah, Too much information. But the main point is this: I do think more of us are more transphobic than we would really like to admit, even to ourselves. I certainly don't think everyone with transphobic feelings feels ashamed of them or even feels they should feel ashamed of them - though I do think some people with transphobic feelings would deny all that anyway, even to themselves. It's not transphobia, it's...
However, I think rather than shaming ourselves and each other over it we could all just do with a bit more honest self-reflection. There's nothing shameful IMO, in finding trans-ness weird and hard to deal with. There's nothing bad about feeling uncomfortable with people seriously challenging something we consider basic, settled and take for granted - in a way, it's all a part of getting older in a world that never stops evolving. But what we do with those feelings matters - whether we retreat into preconceptions and put up walls and attack, or if we try and engage positively with something that isn't going away any time soon.
Or maybe these are really the end-times and fire will shortly cleanse the earth of all wickedness and sin
*hits post*
fuck it.
/edited to add spoiler tags, when I remembered this is the politics forum not one of the restricted ones. I don't mind posting that stuff but I don't want it to come up on G**gle. And then again to edit P*'s name.
That’s interesting to read & I appreciate your openness and thoughtfulness, thanks.
I’m curious as to the difference between sexual orientation and (any given)-phobia. If you switch it around, would a cis guy who is heterosexual be homophobic, just on the basis of his sexual orientation? I think people who fit that description might also be good allies for lgbt+ . I’m really struggling with the idea that any kind of sexual preference around the kind of bits someone has as being phobic. To explore a personal one, I’ve encountered people whose kink is not my kink, so things didn’t go any further, but it’s not because I was judging them negatively for their preference, it just wasn’t my bag.
TopCat
Putin fanboy
How far is preference acceptable? What if people (as they do) state a genital preference of a certain colour white/black/brown etc?
co-op
But....but cLoWnFiSh....
All depends what you mean by 'support'. If 'support' means going along with a theory of gender identity that demands everyone else buys into a really crass reactionary gender binary, then no, you can't.
If it means never critiquing anything that a transwoman says about gender then no.
Both of these actions are widely described as 'transphobic' and I think that's bullshit anyway but even more so when doing so effectively dismisses a whole generation of feminist thought (apparently without actually reading it or understanding it or even acknowledging its existence) and dismissing actual feminists as deranged, bitter old women, jealous of their youthful usurpers.
"Alleged inner drive" was a stupid phrase to use because there's obviously a real drive there, I don't think anyone is just going to make this stuff up, and I don't think that in any of my mulitple posts on this subject there's any suggestion that this is what I think. My point is always that "inner drives" are far more socially constructed than we are generally ready to admit, as are our socialised gender roles.
But I'm sure that if this thread lasts ten years, someone will still be quoting it to prove something or other. Luckily I'm too old to give a shit.
co-op
But....but cLoWnFiSh....
That's not my memory but I was on the receiving end of a pretty hefty pile-on so there was a limit to how much attention I was giving it after a certain point. There was a lot of unctuous "thank you for sharing" stuff.
co-op
But....but cLoWnFiSh....
My point about Iran was directed very specifically at the one or two posters who have decided that because the usual sexually-reactionary suspects have got stuck in about bathrooms and all this kind of shit in the States (about which I couldn't care less, make them all unisex, end of story), that therefore radical feminists are damned by association with these idiots.
But of course there are sexually-reactionaries who love the trans binary thesis so this argument cuts down both sides.
nyxx
*
Colour preference is not about sexual orientation, it’s about race. Different discussion altogether imo.
co-op
But....but cLoWnFiSh....
Aha! And you think you can separate race, gender and eroticism? I really doubt it.
NoXion
Craicy the Squirrel
So what if they do? How should right-thinking people go about this, by hectoring and lecturing people who do state a preference? I don't think that's going to achieve anything other than alienating people and/or getting them to shut up instead of actually talk about things. If the person shutting up actually is an unapologetic racist and is not just stating a preference, then result. Otherwise, since I don't think that most people are incorrigible bigots, I don't see the point.
Shechemite
Be the sun and all will see you
This is all a bit weird isn’t it
People have the right to say no to sex. What qualification to this can ever be acceptable?
People have the right to say no to sex. What qualification to this can ever be acceptable?
Plenty of Nazis used Jewish women for their own ends so their racial prejudices were pushed to one side when they could dominate in a sexual way. There’s loads of hypocrisy when it comes to sex and sexuality for fascists. So it’s daft going along this route.
TopCat
Putin fanboy
Its not cut and dried far from it. People particulary gay blokes advertise online dating for blacks only asian only white only and this is not something to just gloss over.
Plenty of women like tall men. Plenty of men like slim women. We could be here forever.
Shechemite
Be the sun and all will see you
Plenty of women write ‘no Asian men’, or ‘black guys only’. What of it?
Shechemite
Be the sun and all will see you
And the obverse: Milo touting his fondness for ‘black cock’ as proof positive of his not being a racist.
TopCat
Putin fanboy
A lot of these expressed preferences are based in racism.
Shechemite
Be the sun and all will see you
Maybe.
If someone wants to limit their dating/hook up pool according to their prejudices, so what?
TopCat
Putin fanboy
We should not ignore nor pander to their predjudice.
People should not have to feel devalued when observing said shit.
co-op
But....but cLoWnFiSh....
When of course it proves the precise opposite.
But erotic drives are bound to reflect societal taboos especially when sexuality and gender are obsessively categorised and enforced. Many’s the Jewish man who sneaks off to play out Auschwitz with a “Nazi” dominatrix, or black men to be a slave with the massah’s bitchy but hot wife etc etc
andysays
Love and solidarity
I agree with the point you're making here, but I'm not sure how it relates to the original jumping off point, which I thought was about whether people (either het men or lesbians) choosing not to have sex with biologically-male transwomen are transphobic, as some transactivists are claiming
Surely the point has been that some rad fems are actively working with and alongside republicans and fundies in the US, and the right of the Tory Party and right wing press here. Since I'm not aware of any trans-activists working with the Ayatolla I don't really think it's a valid comparison.
co-op
But....but cLoWnFiSh....
That's the difference between a political system that encourages such alliances and one that forbids them (at least overt formulations of them).
The main difference between the two examples is that the alliance between rad fems and right wing repressives in the US is clearly an alliance of convenience in which two groups with fundamentally at-odds ideologies have found common political ground whereas in Iran I see little evidence of any ideological divergence between the mullahs and the 'woman-born-in-a-man's-body' kind of trans theorists.
You seem to be reluctant to ackowledge that this is also happening here, and that some of the most virulent anti-trans rhetoric is now coming from people in the UK - including the people running the Women's Place Is On The Platform speaking tour.
I very much doubt any trans activist would work the the Iranian regime even if such an alliance was enouraged or possible.
I also don't really think it's fair to say trans-activists are working with the British Army or other reactionary organisations, other than in their roles as employers of people. They are not having meetings about policy, or feeding each other juicy stories for the media. They are also not swallowing their principles and working with men's rights activists or other groups who are opposed to feminists - mostly because the majority of trans-activists would say they were feminists, and many have a radical critique of the gender binary. Trans-exclusion is just one shade of radical feminism, and one not shared by Dworkin, Butler and many more rad fems - this conflict is not trans vs feminists, no matter how much those who are trans-exclusionary would like to present it that way, but trans vs a very small group of radical feminists who oppose the existence of transgender people.
Now lots of people have got swept up in that and I don't support labelling anyone who questions gender identity or raises concerns about women's spaces as a terf. But the problem arises as i've repeatedly said, that when those who are more moderate in their concerns share platforms with and attend meetings by the more virulent anti trans rad fems, when they repeat their propaganda, which has happened on this thread or when they use memes similar to those used by rad fems (which is why I bristled at your comment, 'pretend feels' is very much a terf meme). How are those who are trans supposed to know the difference? Particularly given that online at least these debates usually take place whilst those who are trans supportive are also facing a deluge of abuse from the reactionary right.
If you wanted to start a radical debate about Islam, from a left and secular point of view, you wouldn't start with Tommy Robinson on the platform, his footsoldiers handing out leaflets to the crowd, and even the more moderate speakers preaching scare stories from the EDL website. That's what the trans/gender critical movement looks like to many trans people, and it astonishes me that anyone thinks a reasonable debate can happen under those conditions. Which is a shame, because there is a lot of common ground between both groups both in terms of criticism of the gender binary and shared social and political demands.
But everyone proscribes when it comes to relationships. Surely better that they’re honest before the fact than waste someone’s time?
Proscribe wrong word but the right one eludes me presently.
snadge
metal alchemist
Do you really believe that if you flirt with someone that they should be obliged to reciprocate?
That is sexual predatory action in a fucking nutshell.
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